It doesn’t do anything to advance the plot, but it’s just so sweet, and it really illustrates the power of the blessings.

The one where Zoe helps a man draw blessings for his newborn twin girls. If you want to learn the card game penta, which several characters play during the Elemental Blessings books, click HERE.

If anyone is wondering, I consider myself a grounded torz woman, with occasional flashes of sweela fire. If I ever decide to get a tattoo (still in doubt), I’m going to pick one of the random blessings for the artwork. Nominated for the 2011 Mythopeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, given out by the Mythopoeic Society. But if she uncovers the momentous secrets of her family’s past, will her whole life change? Do her father’s secrets put the king at risk? And could Darien Serlast help her put the puzzle pieces together-if he would? Her brilliant father was exiled by the king at the urging of Zoe’s coru grandmother, and now Zoe wants to know why. Zoe is coru, a woman of water, and so was her mother and all her mother’s family her father was sweela, a man of fire. Sharon Shinn - Troubled Waters - National bestselling author Sharon Shinn introduces a rich new fantasy world, one in which people believe that five. Like everyone else in Chialto, Zoe frequently seeks guidance at the temples, pulling “random blessings” from great barrels of stamped coins each blessing is related to one of the five elemental influences of air, water, fire, wood, and earth. She doesn’t want to marry the king, but she doesn’t know what her destiny holds. Numb with grief, she accompanies him to the city of Chialto, but she is able to slip away from him and hide among the city’s vagrants. Sharon Shinn has an easy prose style, nicely balanced between description, action, exposition, dialogue, and inner thoughts, all suffused with a distinct warmth. Zoe Ardelay is living in an obscure village, mourning her father’s death, when a powerful man named Darien Serlast arrives and informs her she must travel to the royal city and become the king’s fifth bride. “Shinn carries readers away into a vivid new fantasy world where the five elements control everyone’s lives.”-Publisher’s Weekly Elemental Blessings : Troubled Waters, Royal Airs, Jeweled Fire, Unquiet Land

Troubled Waters by Sharon Shinn